May 8, 2013 (Washington, DC) – The Employee Ownership Foundation, is proud to announce the recipients of the Louis O. Kelso Fellowships for 2013- 2014. The Louis O. Kelso Fellowships are awarded to scholars studying broadened ownership of capital in the U.S. The Fellowships are part of the national fellowship program on employee stock ownership of the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University. For additional information about the Kelso Fellowships and the SMLR, please visit: http://smlr.rutgers.edu/kelso-fellows.

“The Employee Ownership Foundation is pleased to once again sponsor the Louis O. Kelso Fellowships through the Rutgers University’s School of Management and Labor Relations,” said Employee Ownership Foundation Chair, Frieda S. Takaki. “We are proud to support this scholarly research on the impact of employee ownership on employees, their companies, the communities, and, yes, our country.”

Kyongji Han, Ph.D. candidate, School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers University. New Brunswick, NJ and Assistant Professor (beginning September 2013), University of Minnesota Labovitz School of Business and Economics, Duluth, MN.

Research Question: How do individual workers respond to aspects of their Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) and how does this response relate to team performance?

Research Question: How do firms access financing in industries where employee ownership is prevalent and what is the role of the type of employee ownership arrangements in financing?

Stephen H. Wagner, Assistant Professor, Governors State University, University Park, MI. (Ph.D. in Organizational and Industrial Psychology from Northern Illinois University in 2000.)

Research Question: What are the effects of changes in the market value of ESOPs on the mental health of the worker owners?

Tricia McTague, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI. (Ph.D. in Sociology from North Carolina State University in 2010).

Research Question: What can we learn from the experience of workers in the seventy-five unionized ESOP Homeland Food Stores in Oklahoma and Texas about the relevance of employee ownership to unionized workers?

Tom Malleson, Lecturer, University of Toronto, Department of Political Science. Toronto, Canada. (Ph.D. in Political Theory from the University of Toronto in 2012)

Research Question: What kind of economic arrangements would successfully institutionalize political philosopher John Rawls’ Property-Owning Democracy and create broad-based citizen capital ownership?

For additional information about Louis O. Kelso Fellows, please visit the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations website here.

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The ESOP Association is the national trade association for companies with employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) and the leading voice in America for employee ownership. The core cause of The ESOP Association is the belief that employee ownership will improve American competitiveness, increase productivity through greater employee participation, and strengthen our free enterprise economy. More information: website - www.esopassociation.org and blog – www.esopassociationblog.org.